In September 2003 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced its amnesty program through which people could sign an official affidavit to get rid of sound recordings obtained illegally, as the RIAA beefed up its program of prosecuting offenders. RIAA allowed an out-of-court settlement, with the average settlement being $3,000.
In February 2004 UT’s Office of Information Technology announced that students using file-sharing software on university networks would see tighter restrictions. The ResNet network (student residence hall network) internet access stood consistently at 100 percent capacity at all times the dorms were full, and peer-to-peer file sharing was a majority of the traffic. Students caught downloading or sharing copyrighted material were warned by OIT the first time, lost their internet privileges the second time, and the incident was referred to Judicial Affairs.